It is known to use a “day tank” at cement grinding plants where cement clinker is ground into finished cement product. So-called day tanks are containers in which the cement manufacturer adds water for the purpose of dispersing the grinding additive or perhaps for enhancing its pumpability.
The present inventors discovered that the practice of diluting cement grinding additives can create problems in circumstances wherein a desired defoamer package, contained within the grinding additive formulation, becomes destabilized and tends to separate when total solids concentration of the formulation falls below eighty percent (80%).
The present inventors desire to employ tri-iso-butylphosphate (“TIBP”) as an air detraining agent (or “defoamer”) due to recent commercial availability and due to what they have discovered is its relatively better ability, compared to its analogue tri-n-butylphosphate (“TNBP”), to resist structural degradation caused by harsh cement grinding mill temperatures and the mechanical grinding process itself.
However, the use of powerful defoamers, such as TIBP, renders it difficult to obtain a uniform distribution throughout the cement additive and resultant cement, particularly when total solids content of the cement additive composition falls below 80%, and especially as the concentrations must be minute. Thus, a novel composition and use of a cement additive having a powerful defoamer package with stable dilution characteristic are needed.